No fines issued over A&E crowding

Not a single hospital has been fined for failure to implement a policy that is supposed to reduce overcrowding in emergency departments — at a time when numbers on trolleys are at record levels.

The HSE said “no fines have been issued in respect of the escalation framework” a policy brought in by mandatory national directive in November 2015.

The directive requires that hospitals follow specific steps once patients are on trolleys for more than nine hours. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation reported 7,781 patients on trolleys waiting for a bed last month.